Field
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to the field of laundry appliances.
Background
Many households generate enormous amounts of laundry requiring large amounts of time to wash, transfer, dry, transfer, and fold/put away several loads. As a result, recent efforts have been made to develop systems for automating the laundry process. However, these systems that have been developed to date have significant drawbacks.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,671,978 to McGowan et al. discloses a combination washer/dryer that automatically moves laundry from the washer to the dryer and also includes an automatic load-feeder bin. However, the McGowan machine is only capable of queuing up one additional load of laundry while another one is being washed. It is also flawed in that the design assumes that all loads are to be washed at the same settings. In reality, it may be more desirable, for example, to wash one load in hot water and another in cold water, to wash one load in the normal cycle and another in a gentle cycle, etc.
Furthermore, the McGowan machine transfers a load from the washer to the dryer by literally flipping the washer drum upside down and shaking it so as to dump the load into the dryer drum below. It should be appreciated that wet articles of clothing may tend to stick to the sides of a washer drum, particularly after the conclusion of a spin cycle, and therefore it is highly likely that one or more articles may not get transferred to the dryer drum. It is also possible that an article could become snagged on one of the washer drum's perforations or the agitator and likewise not be transferred properly to the dryer drum. As a result, clothing of one type (e.g. a white dress shirt) may unintentionally get washed with clothing of another type (e.g. a red sweater), which can often lead to undesirable results—sometimes even ruining clothes completely.
U.S. Publication No. 2007/0169519 to Hershey et al. likewise discloses a combination washer/dryer that automatically moves laundry from the washer to the dryer. The Hershey Publication discloses loading the washer via a load compartment which holds a single, additional load of laundry or, alternatively, via a conveyor belt that dumps clothes into the washer. The Hershey machine suffers from many of the same shortcomings as the McGowan machine. In particular, the Hershey design assumes that all loads are to be washed at the same settings. Also, while the Hershey design uses a slightly different methodology to transfer clothes from the washer to the dryer—namely, dumping the clothes from the washer to the dryer by means of a trap door—the same problems with clothes sticking to the side and/or getting snagged are possible. Furthermore, while the conveyor system disclosed in Hershey may allow for the queuing of multiple additional loads of laundry, it does not provide any means for delimiting between multiple loads. For example, the Hershey machine has no way of knowing where a load of whites ends and a load of colors begins. Thus, the Hershey machine is not suitable for everyday consumer use.